Category Archives: Mississippi

Beautiful Saturday to Fly… Just a short post to show the video we made while at the Copiah County, MS Fly-In a few weeks ago. We had a GREAT turn out with some really nice planes! Good food, FAA Wings credit, cheap gas, and I found someone to buy my old magnetos… perfect day!

Our original plan… was to start our Oshkosh trip on Friday afternoon by heading to the camper in Arkansas for a couple of days, but the weather forecast for for Friday didn’t look very good. With this front coming in it could have delayed us several days, so we decided to get out in front of the weather and get to Arkansas Thursday night.

You wanna do what?… My phone call to Beth on the way home from work Thursday was interesting. “I think we can be packed and on the way to the airport in an hour” I said… I detected a hint of skepticism in her voice… “So you want to pack and leave tonight?” “Yep”, I said, “If we hurry, we can be on the ground by 9:00 pm in Flippin”. Beth has never been one to back down from a challenge, so by the time I got home she was ready and all I had to do was throw 10 days worth of t-shirts and tighty-whitys in my stuff sack and we were on our way!

Perfect Flight – See photo above… this was a great sunset flight. We touched down at KFLP at about 9:05, cranked “Jane” and headed to the camper to get the AC turned on. Sure enough, as forecast, the weather moved into north Arkansas about 9 am and by the time we would have left Friday it was a real mess, see photo below…

Fixed the Hooter Valve… Since we were a late arrival in Flippin, we decided to go to the airport and put the plane in a hangar before the weather came through Friday. After this was done, we took Jane back to the repair shop to have her defective “hooter valve” replaced… Long story, but she now runs much quieter!

As we drove by Dally’s fly shop, we saw our buddy Ron’s truck and stopped by to visit. After an hour of catching up and buying a few flys and tying supplies we had a plan to fish in the am. So, our plan now is to visit the Norfork in the morning to fish and head to Oshkosh on Sunday, the weather looks great there and we can’t wait!

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Plan A… Yesterday we had signed up for the civilian fly-in at the Columbus Air Force Base. We had our standard government paperwork filed to land at CAFB and we were excited about spending the day around the jets on base and spending some time in the simulators. The weather was looking good until we arrived at the Raymond Airport to depart… heavy fog. We waited as long as we could for it to clear, but no luck and our time ran out. In order to land at CAFB, we had a designated slot time for arrivals and if we were not “wheels up” by 0715 from Raymond, we would not make the slot. At this point we threw up our hands and drove to Starbucks for coffee and a muffin and to come up with Plan B.

Plan B… One of the things you learn as a pilot is to always have an alternate plan. Our Plan B, was to go to the fly-in and camp out down at Pineville, LA (2L0) and check out the planes and eat lunch. We have been to Pineville for their monthly breakfast several times, but not to the fall fly-in. I started looking at the weather south of here only to see that it was still socked in near Pineville. 1/2 mile visability and 200 foot ceilings still plagued south Louisiana, so we decided to rub on the plane for a while until the weather broke at our destination. 2 hours later and a call to the automated weather system at Alexandria confirmed the poor computer reports… It’s still low IFR. Now we are getting stir crazy and ready to go somewhere.

Plan C… We had been invited to fly to Starkville with some friends to watch Mississippi State play Tennessee, but had decided that flying home after an 8:00 game was not for me. But, this is the south and 90% of the fun of college football is the pre-game campus environment. So, Plan C turned out to be flying to Starkville, MS (KSTF), eat lunch at our old favorite place, Oby’s, and walk campus before the game. This was perfect, after a great lunch, we spent some time shopping in the book store, visiting the Student Union, watching other college games on various TV’s and tailgating with friends. After walking miles and covering the beautiful MSU campus we flew home to just in time to catch our Bulldogs on ESPN.

#HAILSTATE… After waking up at 0500, this had been a long day… We were tired, but wide awake in front of the TV until 2330 when our beloved MSU Bulldogs defeated The Tennessee Volunteers 41 to 31. Our now 15th ranked Bulldogs are 6 & 0 for the first time in many years and should be 7 & 0 when they roll into Tuscaloosa on the 27th of October to play the #1 ranked Crimson Tide of Alabama – GO DAWGS!

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First Stop KFLP… Well, we made it out before the storms hit the Jackson area and into Flippin before it started raining here. We started out from Raymond at 8500 feet and went to 10,500 and realized we could not get high enough to get over the buildups, so the last 30 minutes of the trip was “down and dirty” at 4500 over the Ozarks. The Foreflight screen shot below shows what it looked like about two hours after we landed:

Clear Sailing, but HOT… We should be out in front of all of the weather that will be affecting the south. Tomorrow’s plan is to get up early and head to Grand Island, NE (KGRI) for gas and a stretch before the temps get so bad. Unfortunately, when we roll into Rapid City, it’s supposed to be 100+, but we should have clear skies most of the way. That’s all for tonight, we are in our “happy spot” in Arkansas with a nice bottle of wine and a cool place to sleep…

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Flying for work… One of the perks of my job is having the ability to fly to our distant locations when needed. Flying the RV-9A actually burns less gas than my Dodge and when I can avoid the cost of an overnight stay its a win-win for me and the company. This was the case earlier this week, when I needed to do some work at our location near Bay St. Louis , MS. This is nearly a seven hour round trip drive that could be made in Caddie in about 50 minutes, one way, and the Stennis International Airport (KHSA) is just a couple of miles away. All I needed now was a ride to the plant…

I’ll take the Mercedes… Since renting a car would defeat the justifiable savings of being able to fly, I usually try to get a local employee of ours to pick me up or secure a crew car. So, I called the local FBO at Stennis (MILLION AIR), and asked if they had a crew car that I could use. “Yes Sir, we do…” the young lady said, so I gave her my tail number and told her when we would be there. Upon arrival at Stennis, we taxied to the ramp area, topped off the left tank (all of about 8 gallons)and proceeded inside to pick up the car. After photocopying my license she tossed me the key… well, not exactly a key, but a big plastic thing that had Mercedes written on it. “It’s the black E350 just out the door” she said … WOW, I’ve had crew cars from a Jeep Cherokee with the rear window taped up to retired police cars to a new bright yellow Camaro (KJKA), but I’ve never been offered a Benz.

NO PReNDLe… OK, “you know you’re a red neck when…” you can’t get the car in gear. We built our own airplane, wired the all glass – high tech panel and fly it all over the country, but put me in a car without a gear shift and i’m lost. There was no standard gear shift with the normal PRND12 symbols – aka “PReNDLe”, instead there was a “little shifter like thingy” that you pushed forward to go into reverse and pulled back to go forward (German engineering at its best). I did finally get the car going in the right direction without taking out the chain-link fence around the airport and the ride to work was great. This is a very nice car that had a real smooth ride and nice high tech gadgets in the panel.

After a successful trip to our plant, we returned to the FBO and pulled out our snack lunch and enjoyed our meal in front of the big screen TV. The folks at the FBO were very nice and the fuel prices were reasonable at around $5.70 a gallon. The airport has a nice big runway for the area we were in in Mississippi. At 8500 feet long by 150 feet wide, they can handle all sorts of large aircraft. Being an old “space nut” I may bring us back to visit the Stennis Space Center which is only a few miles down the road and maybe even get another ride in the Benz…

OK… time for a little photography, since we can’t afford to fly off somewhere every weekend and no one has offered us a new pair of waders…(see last post). This 3 frame (handheld) HDR shot was recently taken at our home airport, John Bell Williams at Raymond (KJVW). The Waco was being flown by Dan Fordice of the Southern Heritage Air Foundation located at the Tallulah-Vicksburg Airport (KTVR). Dan is a member of our local EAA Chapter and flies one of the museum’s beautiful birds in when he can. Currently the museum is open by appointment only, but plans are being made to open it to the public later this year. You can see more about the activities at SHAF at their website.